Finding Apps

There are several ways to search for and find apps you are interested in.

Browsing Categories: Click on a category (for example, Communication or Productivity) to see a list of interesting apps in that category. Upon clicking a category, you are presented with a list of featured apps for that category, as well as a canonical listing of all apps. Also, on the right, are lists of the Most Viewed apps within that category.

Figure 15.8: When searching for apps for your portal, you can browse through the complete list of Marketplace apps or browse by category.

Searching: To search for an app, type in search criteria in the search box under the navigation menu on the left and click Search. Apps matching the specified search criteria are displayed.

Figure 15.9: You can search for apps using the search box in the navigation menu. Results are returned if your search terms match an app’s title or description.

Apps are often updated to include new features or fix bugs. Each time an app is updated, its version number is changed. The version number is specified by the app developer and often follows established norms, such as 1.0 → 1.1 → 2.0 or 1.0.1 → 1.0.2 → 1.2.0 and so on. Generally, the higher the numbers, the newer the version.

When viewing an app’s details, click on the Version History tab to see a list of versions of the app. In some cases, not all historical versions of apps are available, depending on the app. Usually, you will want to download and install the latest available app for the version of Liferay you are using (See Compatibility below).

Some apps are written to work across a wide range of Liferay Platform releases. Others are dependent on a specific Liferay Platform release (or a handful of such releases). When viewing individual apps, each version of the app that is available also describes the range of Liferay Platform versions the app is compatible with. Make sure to choose a version of the app that is compatible with your Liferay Platform release.

Figure 15.10: Look at an app’s supported framework versions to check if it’s compatible with your version of Liferay.

To check if an app is compatible with your version of Liferay, click on the App and then click on the Version History tab. The Version History tab displays not only the list of versions of the app but also the app’s supported framework versions and the dates of each version of the app. The supported framework version of the app tells you whether or not the app is compatible with your version of Liferay.